DAVID COOTE “deserves” to have a continued role in English football, the chairman of the Referees’ Association (RA) has said.

Coote’s contract as an elite-level referee with Professional Game Match Officials Limited (PGMOL) was terminated last month after a video emerged showing him making derogatory comments about Liverpool and their former manager Jurgen Klopp.

A separate video also showed Coote taking cocaine. In an interview with The Sun, released on Monday evening, Coote came out as gay and said his struggle to hide his sexuality had contributed to him making bad choices, such as the video about Liverpool, and his use of drugs.

Coote remains one of the most highly regarded VARs in Europe, and is keen when the time is right to have a role related to officiating, if not an on-field one.

Paul Field, the chairman of the RA which looks after the welfare of referees at all levels, has already seen the work Coote has done with young officials and hopes that experience is not lost to the English game.

“He deserves to have a role. The work he does with young people is exemplary,” Field said.

“He’s an unbelievable tutor. He puts so much time and effort into the up-and-coming grassroots officials. He has a magnificent role to offer in terms of coaching, mentoring and support.

“I’d love for him to stay in the UK. I’d love him to be part of the English Football Association, training, mentoring, out of the public light to look after himself. He has so much to offer.

“I don’t think he knows how much respect he has from other referees for the work he has done.”

Sources close to Coote say he is keeping an open mind about what he may look to do next.

He is understood to remain confident that a Football Association investigation into messages exchanged with a Leeds fan concerning showing a yellow card to one of their players in 2019 will clear him.

Coote also told The Sun about the mental strain created by the abuse he faced, which included death threats aimed at him and his mother.

Those comments came after another referee, Michael Oliver, was subjected to threats and abuse after showing a red card to Arsenal’s Myles Lewis-Skelly in a match at Wolves on Saturday.

Field laid the blame primarily at ex-player pundits for sparking social media “pile-ons” with their comments, and said he was minded to make a complaint to broadcasting regulator Ofcom.

“These pundits, ex-professionals, who pile on are the source of the problem. I think the broadcasters have a duty of care to people. Ofcom ought to be writing to some of these media companies and radio companies, just to remind them of their own obligations.”

Field said he could understand why Coote had not gone public about his sexuality while he was refereeing, adding: “Whatever angle supporters can have a go at, they’ll have a go at. The referee abuse we have is horrendous and any excuse for any of these morons to have a go at us, they will use that excuse.”

Former player Zander Murray, who came out as gay in 2022, said today he had been contacted by Coote at the time to offer his support.

Murray told talkSPORT: “He resonated with my story back then, and he was really, really struggling with his own sexuality. Obviously fast-forward to now, what he’s done is obviously a huge error and huge mistake, and he’s been punished for that.

“I’m not in regular contact with him. All I can vouch for is he’s definitely not lying in regards to struggling with this for a long time.”